Note: This
correspondence with Amazon.com resulted from the New York
Times article about the "glitch" in Canada that
revealed the names of "reviewers" who were promised
anonymity on Amazon's book sites.

TO:
Amazon.Com

02/16/04
22:46:31

NAME:
John Rechy

COMMENTS:
Please refer this immediately to the proper department
since it involves questions regarding proposed litigation
and demanded adjustments resulting from your so-called
"glitch" in Canada. I am the author named in
widely circulated media accounts of that "Amazon
glitch" that identified supposedly "anonymous"
writers in your customer review columns. I wrote an review
of my own book under my correct e-mail name, and that
confidential impormation,
explicitly guaranteed by you, was revealed on your Canadian
website, and in media accounts in this country and abroad,
despite your written guarantees otherwise. Subsequently
you have not only removed that single review from the
site that identifies my new novel, but you have deleted
all other favorable reviews, none written by me, and have
left only negative reviews. The result is a serious interference
with the sale of my novel "The Life and Adventures
of
Lyle Clemens" (ISBN 0802117465) and a compromise
to my reputation, all resulting from your own actionable
mistake. Unless the removed favorable reviews are restored
immediately, including the one I wrote under the heading
of "A Reader from Chicago"--which I intend to
address in that same department under my own name--the
injury resulting from such removal of favorable reviews
will be added to my
complaint based on your having caused me irreparable humiliation,
without allowing me the option to respond. I expect your
immediate answer pending further moves to be taken in
this breech of an agreement posted on your website guaranteeing
anonymity, a guarantee that identities are to be respected,
a written guarantee callously violated by you and compounded
by your further removal of favorable reviews of my novel,
all of which augments the seriousness of this violation.